


9 Minutes

by mad_martha



Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-27
Updated: 2011-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-23 03:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/245716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So what did happen during those nine missing minutes?</p>
            </blockquote>





	9 Minutes

**Author's Note:**

> Reference to the the pilot episode and the first movie (Fight The Future).

   "I want to go back there," Scully said.

 

   Mulder wasn't listening to her.  He peered out of the windshield at the thrashing rain, convinced that he recognised this strip of road they were travelling along, and on an impulse he fiddled with the radio.  A low, discordant hum threaded out of the speakers, not as violent as the screech which had issued forth the day before, but similar enough to grab his interest. 

 

   "Mulder?"

 

   Mulder dug out the compass he had used in the forest and glanced quickly down at it.  The rain was far too heavy to risk more than that, but even that short look showed him that the needle was moving wildly.

 

   "Mulder, are you okay?" Scully frowned.

 

   "I don't know, " he began, when abruptly he was cut short.  The car was filled with an excruciatingly bright glare.

 

   Scully gasped, squeezing her eyes shut and turning her head away, and for second the world faded away ….

 

XXXX

 

 

   "Mulder?" she called hesitantly, but there was no reply.  The echo reverberated around her hollowly, and she had the inescapable feeling that she was – one way or another – utterly alone in here.  Wherever "here" was ….

 

   She was standing in a dark, low-ceilinged corridor, and the air was frigid.  Under her feet was a narrow metal grille that was more a walkway than a floor; it clanked dully when she moved.   Above her head, however, was a ceiling which _looked_ as though it might have been tunnelled out of something, rock, ice or metal, but it was difficult to tell.  And on either side of her, the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling structures which looked a little like gigantic glass bottles held in clamps.  Scully hesitantly approached one to examine it more closely; it was a translucent green, like recycled glass, and semi-coated in a thick frost. She brushed the ice away gingerly with her fingertips – and was confronted by a staring human face.


  



   Scully recoiled, horrified, for a second then steeled herself to take a closer look.  It was hard to tell through the thick glass, but it was a man and there seemed to be something wrong with him, as though his flesh was becoming as translucent as the glass he was encased in.  There was a tube feeding into his throat, but it was impossible to tell whether he was alive or dead.  Revolted, she walked a few steps down the walkway and scraped the ice off another bottle.  This time it looked like a woman, but she was in the same condition as the man.  Scully brushed more ice off the bottle to see if there was any other evidence of a life-support system inside.  There wasn't – but there did appear to be some other, unidentified organism sharing the container.  With a start, she realised that this organism was actually _inside_ the woman's body, and its flesh was pulsing faintly. 

 

   Stepping back, she had to fight nausea.  This entire corridor was like some grotesque giant's larder, stocked with huge pickle jars.  The unexpected comparison was enough to make her gag and look for an avenue out.

 

   The passage was huge, stretching out for what seemed like miles, and was lined with hundreds of containers.  Scully walked along it for a while, listening to the dull background clanking of machinery, until she came to a turn-off.  Bending at the waist to get through the narrow aperture, she emerged into a vast coliseum that seemed to stretch upwards into infinity.  The place was full  of machinery and rows upon rows of the glass bottles.  Scully gazed around her, wide-eyed, then approached one collection of bottles reluctantly.  They were newer, coated in a chilly film of condensation rather than ice, and she was able to see that the bodies inside appeared newer and were suspended in a translucent green fluid.  There was no sign of other organisms inhabiting the bodies here.  Slow clanking above her head made her look up, and she saw that more of the new containers were being transported on a conveyer belt  to some other part of the structure.

 

   Scully looked down again, and her eye was caught by something.  Abandoned in the middle of the walkway was a cryolitter – something she had only seen once in her entire medical career.  They were used to transport individuals with contagious diseases, or who had been exposed to a deadly pathogen, and had their own carefully regulated and contained environment.

 

   It seemed odd to see such an object in the middle of all this alien machinery, so she went to take a look. 

 

   The litter had clearly been used and abandoned.  She lifted the heavy glass cover, noting in passing that the environment controls had been set for a near-freezing temperature, and found a heap of women's clothing lying on the padded base.  Scully fingered the finely tailored black suit and cream silk blouse; the latter was still inside the jacket, as though its wearer had been removed from her clothing without actually undressing, and further investigation showed that even the bra and panties were still inside.  A pair of neat black leather boots lay primly on their sides at the foot of the slacks.  The label inside the blouse collar bore the name of one of Scully's favourite outfitters and as she examined it, noting that the size was also her own, she made a disturbing discovery.  Just inside the neck of the blouse lay a small tangled gold chain and cross.

 

   Scully's fingers flew to her own neck, where an identical cross, given to her by her mother on her fifteenth birthday, lay against her skin.  What the –

 

   Her thoughts were suddenly jerked away by a distant scrabbling sound, barely audible above the noise of the machines around her.  She held her breath, eyes searching the dimly lit chamber, when she heard it again.  Then she heard a distinct cry of "Oh shit!"

 

   Scully jumped to her feet.  That voice had been familiar.  "Mulder!" she shouted, hearing her voice echo horribly.

 

   No reply, but there was a series of thumps and grunts, brought up finally by a loud thud. 

 

   Silence.  Scully held her breath, waiting.

 

   Finally, there was more scrabbling, a dull clang of boots on a metal walkway, and her partner appeared – dishevelled, wet, and sporting a nasty wound on his temple.  He was dressed in heavy cold-weather gear and looked decidedly the worse for wear.

 

   "Mulder, thank God!"  Scully hurried to his side.  "What happened?  Where have you been?  And what _is_ this place?"

 

   But he ignored her, rushing past as if he hadn't seen her.  Puzzled, Scully watched as he headed for the cryolitter and subjected it to the same examination she had.  After a moment or two, he located the cross and picked it up, studying it almost reverently before tucking it carefully inside his pocket.  Then he stood up again, studying the rows of new containers a few feet away.

 

   "Mulder, what are you doing?"

 

   He headed for the nearest bottle and studied it carefully under the beam of a small flashlight he was carrying.  Then he moved on to the next one.

 

   "Mulder?"

 

   Mulder continued to ignore her, and Scully finally began to realise from his behaviour that he genuinely couldn't see or hear her.  Frightened, she followed him as he worked his way down the rows of containers.  Shortly he stopped by one, and she could see in the chancy light that his face had turned pale.  One hand reached out to brush the surface of the glass almost caressingly, then he was examining the container with desperate urgency, his face filled a gamut of emotions; relief, despair, horror, distress … and determination.

 

   Scully was stunned, watching him as he failed to find a method to open the bottle and resorted to hammering on the glass with his flashlight.  She would never have believed her casual, careless new partner could harbour so much feeling, let alone show it. 

 

   "Mulder, you'll never break it with that," she told him helplessly, aware even as she said it that it would do no good.  He could neither see nor hear her, and she wasn't sure if this was a genuine inability on his part, or whether he was simply ignoring her.  Either way, the effect was the same. 

 

   Mulder abandoned his attempts to break into the container and darted off again, heading for the cryolitter.  Meanwhile, Scully stepped closer to the glass to see who was trapped inside that was motivating such efforts on his part.

 

   To her horror, her own face stared back at her. 

 

   Scully let out a muffled cry of dismay, stumbling backwards.  Now that she had a clear view of the glass pod, she could see the body of her other self trapped inside the green fluid like a fly in amber, with a thick tube forced into her mouth and her eyes staring in mute anguish.  Shock held her frozen as she realised that somehow this other woman must really _be_ her ….

 

   Then Mulder returned at a run, carrying one of the oxygen tanks from the cryolitter.  Hefting the steel tank up to shoulder height, he swung it at the pod with a shattering crunch.  The glass fractured slightly, and he swung the tank again.  This time the glass shattered and a thick, pale  green slush poured from the container.  Mulder dumped the tank on the floor and reached into the inside pocket of his thick polar jacket, pulling out a small felt pouch from which he extracted a hypodermic and vial of some amber fluid. 

 

   Scully shook of her paralysis and made herself go to his side, trying to see what he was doing.  Mulder filled the hypodermic from the vial and with shaking fingers stabbed the needle into the other Scully's shoulder.

 

   The reaction was almost instantaneous.  In front of Scully's stunned eyes, the tube leading into her counterpart's mouth seemed to shrivel.  And simultaneously, the structure around them seemed to shudder violently, throwing both of them backwards to the ground.  Mulder scrambled quickly to his feet again, and hurried back to the pod, glancing nervously around him as he did so.  Then he reached inside and pulled at what remained of the tube inside the other Scully's mouth.  Grimacing, he drew on it hand over hand until finally the end was yanked up out of her throat. 

 

   Nothing happened, except that the structure gave another, more violent reverberation.  Steam began to ooze through the grating under Scully's feet.

 

   "Breathe!" Mulder commanded the other Scully sharply, desperation edging his voice.

 

   The woman blinked.  Then her chest heaved and she coughed up a foul globbet of the green liquid.  The relief on Mulder's face was indescribable as she spluttered rackingly and dragged in a breath.

 




   A tiny, shaking whisper emerged from her lips.  "C-cold …."

 

   Mulder seized the oxygen tank once more and pounded on the remaining glass of the pod until there was a hole big enough to pull her out.  The other Scully's body collapsed gracelessly forward, and he caught her easily, lowering her naked, shuddering form gently to the metal walkway.  Then he set about stripping off the outer layers of his clothes to wrap her in.

 

   Scully crouched down beside the other woman's head, studying her.  This other Scully was recognisably the woman she saw in the mirror every morning, but different; the hair was shorter, and the face leaner, more sculpted.  It was the face, in fact, of an older woman.  There were tiny, almost unnoticeable lines here and there which Scully knew she didn't have; most notably, she could see faint creases of pain at the corners of the eyes and on the brow.

 

   _Is this what I'll look like five years down the line?_ she wondered.  It was only then that it struck her; this was Mulder and herself, apparently still together somehow.  Maybe this _was_ her five years down the line.  _But … here?  In this place?  What on earth happened to us to bring us to this,  under these circumstances?_

 

   She took one final lingering look at the other Scully – herself – and stepped back, watching as Mulder tenderly wrapped her up in his thick jacket and leggings.  The expression on his face was indescribable, and one she felt sure he would never let her see under ordinary circumstances.  Like the other Scully, he was recognisably himself, but Scully could see now that he too was older, and his face bore lines of weariness and despair that were too deeply engraved to be new.  She particularly noted the imprint of bitterness around his mouth, which was completely at odds with the mischievous man she was coming to know.

 

   Something had happened to them which must have been terribly painful, she realised.  And yet they were both _here_ , together, at this point in time and Mulder was wrapping her counterpart up in his clothes, with _that_ look on his face, having just staged a pretty impressive rescue.

 

   Scully watched as Mulder finally zipped up the front of the thick parka and scooped the other Scully up into his arms.  He set off down the metal walkway, hurrying as best he could as the structure around them shook with increasing violence, and pausing only once to transfer the woman in his arms to a slightly easier fireman's carry.

 

   Scully saw his figure dwindle into the distance, but stayed where she was.  Her mind was in turmoil at all she had seen, and as she fought to make sense of it all the alien structure faded away.

 

XXXX

 

   The engine dead, the Taurus drifted to a gentle halt  in the middle of the road.  The rain was still hammering down on the roof and windscreen, but the glare was gone.

 

   For a second the two of them sat still, breathing a little irregularly.  Scully blinked rapidly, confused at a startling skelter of images which, even as she tried to claw on to them, were drifting away from her mind like a dream upon wakening.  In a fraction of a second they were all gone, except one which clung persistently. 

 

   A sense of intense, almost blistering cold on her bare skin; the vile aftertaste of a tube down her throat; and an image, as clear as daylight, of Mulder – an older Mulder – staring intensely into her eyes, shouting "Breathe!"

 

   Then it too was gone, leaving behind only a curious sensation of time having passed.

 

   Scully blinked, sucking in a deep breath and taking a cautious, almost fearful glance sideways at her partner – her _new_ partner.  A man she had known for less than three days.

 

   "What happened?" she demanded shakily.

 

   Mulder attempted to start the car and failed.  "We lost power, brakes, steering, everything."  He looked at his watch.  "We lost nine minutes."

 

   "What?"

 

   "Nine minutes!"  In a bound, he was out of the car and hurrying up the road, studying the asphalt intently.

 

   Scully exited the car more reluctantly, for the rain, far from diminishing, was thrashing down in thick sheets.  Mulder turned to her as though he'd never doubted she would follow, and his face was lit with almost ludicrous joy.  He seized her shoulders.  "Nine minutes!  I checked my watch before the flash and it was nine-oh-three.  It just turned nine-thirteen!  And look!"

 

   He pointed at the ground and Scully was stunned to see orange X he had spray-painted on their arrival in Bellefleur. 

 

   He didn't wait for her comments, but carried on, his words almost tumbling over themselves in his haste to get them out.  "Abductees, Scully – people who have made sightings, they often report strange time loss."

 

   Feeling more than uneasy, she tried to get a grip on the situation.  "Come on – "

 

   He wasn't listening.  "Gone!  Just like that."

 

   "No, what a minute. You're saying that, that time disappeared.  Time can't just disappear, it's - it's a universal invariant!"

 

   It was almost as if Mulder didn't hear her.  "And now we've lost nine minutes!"  He released her, but only to punch the air with both hands in an excess of excitement.  "Oh, YES!  Thank you, God!"

 

   Scully could only stare at him, dumbfounded and suddenly barely aware of the freezing rain plastering her hair to her face.

 

   Only nine minutes?

 

**Author's Note:**

> This story was first posted in January 1999.


End file.
